September 30, 2005 at 9:26 pm
(Political)
Lots of people are mumbling about another conservative speaker being forced to eat his words.
Bennett is shocked that his own party mis-characterized his comments. After all, they should know that he finds abortion reprehensible. Perhaps they’re a little more concerned about why he used in his example black babies, since it seems reasonable to believe that aborting all white babies would have an even greater effect on dampening crime, to say nothing of all babies.
Bennett’s comments are similar to a hypothetical death-penalty opponent suggesting that the death penalty would be ok if it were only applied to Republicans. Is it more reprehensibly because he discusses a procedure disagreeable to him or because he discusses that procedure’s use against a particular group?
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September 28, 2005 at 8:57 pm
(Environment, Science/Technology)
I find it interesting that Michael Crichton testified in front of the Senate on climate change.
Mr Crichton doesn’t believe that human actions are verifiably having a huge effect on “global warming”:
Over the next two hours, Mr. Crichton and four other witnesses offered their thoughts, Mr. Crichton hewing to his firm belief that lawmakers should examine more closely “whether the methodology of climate science is sufficiently rigorous to yield a reliable result.”
While I have been a little skeptical of the claim of a link in greenhouse gases and global warming (I think of a environmentalist book on air quality that included a graph of the Earth’s temperature over thousands of years. The shifts were pretty wild, including a mini ice age in the 16th century.) Temperature shifts have occurred without human intervention before and it’s not unreasonable to believe that they could happen again. That being said, it’s still important to err on the side of caution. Crichton argues that with current science, we can’t know for sure what effects our actions have. So he concedes that greenhouse gasescould have an effect. Given that scientists have hypothesized a mechanism for climate change with greenhouse gases and that we’re seeing things like unusual depletion of the Arctic ice caps, we should be acting now. Waiting for conclusive evidence is like putting off quitting cigarettes because they may be hazardous to your health.
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September 28, 2005 at 2:57 pm
(Privacy, Science/Technology)
While on the web today, I came across this message (paraphrased to protect the guilty):
The default settings in Internet Explorer 6.0 restrict your use of this tool. To set up IE 6.0 to use this tool:
1. Select the ‘Tools’ menu in IE 6.0, and pull down to ‘Internet Options.’
2. Choose the ‘Privacy’ tab in the Internet Options window.
3. The default setting is ‘Medium.’ Drop the bar one notch to ‘Low.’ This will allow third-party cookies to be ‘restricted,’ meaning they are not saved to your hard drive but you may use them during a browser session.
4. Restart your browser and return to our site.
Yeah…I’ll lower my security settings across the board to view your site. That sounds like a great idea. Dumb-asses. I really really wish that these “enable cookies” messages gave some hint that you don’t have to relinquish all control.
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September 28, 2005 at 2:32 pm
(Culture)
Saudi women tell a U.S. Envoy that, among other things, they don’t mind not having the right to drive. An enviromentalist columnist consents that focusing on hybrid SUV’s is a better strategy than simply making more fuel-efficient vehicles. We act surprised when people without cars are trapped in the paths of hurricanes.
All symbolic of how deeply car culture has ingrained itself in the American mind. Middle- and upper- class Americans like myself and probably you can’t imagine life without a car, or even life with a smaller, less powerful car. (And yes, I have a hard time imagining that, too.)
There are clearly people who belive that the advent of cleaner technologies for cars will allow the auto-oriented aspects of our lifestyle to remain more or less the same over the next few decades. I think we should take the opportunity we have now to start “changing gears,” at least with respect to new development. Say, for instance, by taking up David Sucher’s idea of “Urban” parking lot placement to de-emphasize cars. Perhaps sooner rather than later we’ll understand why Saudi women don’t care whether they can drive or not.
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September 27, 2005 at 6:04 pm
(Political)
I’m sure the whole country is talking about this today, but I had to mention Michael D Brown’s pass-the-buck attitude toward FEMA’s failures.
Good managers do not ever pass blame, at least in public. And if surrounding oneself with good managers is a quality of good leaders, well…
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September 27, 2005 at 2:03 pm
(Colorado, Urban Design)
It appears that Aurora’s Buckingham Palace Mall is slated for redevelopment.
This is for the most part, good news, at least in the short-term. As much as I remember Cinderella City being a hole before it was torn down to make room for the Englewood City Center, Buckingham is even worse. It’s always a little sad to drive past immense, empty parking lots. Although the parking lots at Buckingham are so reliably empty that there are often other things going on there.
As I mentioned in this post, smart development is important. Buckingham opened in 1971, so it’s less than 35 years old. I’m confident that the developers can come up with a plan that will survive a little longer. Especially if they abandon the silly notion of the “lifestyle center” which is just a trendy, circa-2005 version of the mall. Come on guys, use your imagination. Where will people congregate in 2040?
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September 21, 2005 at 10:05 pm
(Uncategorized)
A JetBlue A320 had a slightly rough landing at LAX after its landing gear became stuck. Knowing that the plane landed safely and everyone walked off, I don’t feel too bad enjoying this amazing photo of the plane in-flight. Yes, I’m rubbernecking.
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